Cart

Unlocking potential with the best learning and research solutions

Look Inside

I want this title to be available as an eBook

The Life of Schumann

CAD$33.95 (C)

Part of Musical Lives

Author: Michael Musgrave, University of London

Date Published: July 2015
availability: Available
format: Paperback
isbn: 9781107532250

Rate & review

CAD$ 33.95 (C)
Paperback

Add to cart Add to wishlist

Other available formats:
Hardback

Looking for an examination copy?

This title is not currently available for examination. However, if you are interested in the title for your course we can consider offering an examination copy. To register your interest please contact [email protected] providing details of the course you are teaching.

Description

Contents

Resources

Courses

About the Authors

Robert Schumann had a difficult start as a composer. Denied any significant musical upbringing, he took a long time through indirect routes to establish himself as a major composer. Persistent illness also dogged his work. His final catastrophic mental collapse has combined with the autobiographical and secretive aspects of his music to cast for posterity a veil of ominous mystery over his entire life. Yet this is only one view. Schumann battled his personal demons and was acutely self-aware and organized. He transformed himself from a brilliant youthful fantasist in small forms into a composer of extended works in every genre. This book provides a new focus on Schumann as a practical working musician interacting with the professional world to develop his creative gifts to the full, and examines the central role of Clara Wieck Schumann in helping to bring this about.
- Gives a new emphasis to the study of Schumann: most recent biographies have either emphasized his illnesses or interpreted his psychology through his music, whereas this is about the composer as a working musician
- Contextualizes Schumann's music in light of the way he became central to emerging musical culture and concert life, emphasizing the value of his often neglected later works
- A detailed and informative study written with a light touch, this will appeal to scholars, performers and concert-goers alike
Read more
Reviews & endorsements
"Michael Musgrave's new biography is a welcome corrective to the trend, for while it presents a detailed and lively account of the life, it keeps the main musical issues in clear view."
--Music and Letters

Customer reviews

Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review

Log in to review

Review was not posted due to profanity
×

, create a review

(If you're not , sign out)

Please enter the right captcha value

Please enter a star rating.

Your review must be a minimum of 12 words.

How do you rate this item?

Reviews must contain at least 12 words about the product.

×

Product details
- Date Published: July 2015
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781107532250
- length: 236 pages
- dimensions: 216 x 140 x 14 mm
- weight: 0.3kg
- contains: 16 b/w illus.
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Preface: inherited images
1. A favourable upbringing: Zwickau, 1810–28
2. Undirected student: Leipzig and Heidelburg, 1828–30
3. A career in music: Leipzig, 1830–5
4. The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Clara and new horizons: Leipzig, 1835–40
5. Married life: Leipzig, 1840–4
6. Growing ambitions: Dresden, 1844–50
7. Triumph and decline: Düsseldorf, 1850–4
8. The end:
1854–6
Perspective and legacy
Further reading.
Look Inside
Author
Michael Musgrave, University of London
Michael Musgrave is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of London, Visiting Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music, and serves on the Graduate Faculty of the Juilliard School, New York. His field of research is nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German music and English concert life in the same period. His many books include The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace (1995), The Cambridge Companion to Brahms (1999), A Brahms Reader (2000) and, with Bernard D. Sherman, Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style (2003), with a CD of historical recordings: this won the 2003 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Best Research in Recorded Classical Music.